Day 3 - September 1, 2001 Last updated: 9/1/01 8:30pm EDT
Today we went on a guided walking tour of the Back Bay. The neighborhood was built up on landfill by taking land off of Beacon Hill. Beacon Hill is the next neighborhood over, but no longer much of a hill. A lot of Boston is built on landfill. Looking at old maps, from the early 1700s, Boston was almost an island.
The tour began in Copley Square. There is a volunteer group called Boston By Foot that gives the tours, for $8. We walked around the neighborhood and learned about some of the architects of some of the churches and other buildings.
After the tour, we walked on our own around the neighborhood. A lot of college students were moving in today. We ended up walking down along the Charles River. We were fairly close to Fenway Park (home of the Red Sox), but not close enough for a picture. We did see the Citgo sign.
We had taken the “T” out to Copley Square for the start of the tour, but we ended up walking back. This town is small. Or at least it seems small. We had no trouble walking back (put on 8.3 miles today). We ended up walking past our hotel to the Quincy Market for some ice cream. Man was that place packed full of people. We got out of there as soon as we could. We spent the afternoon relaxing, reading books, if you can believe it, sitting in the Public Garden, the park next to Boston Common. We sat in the shade and enjoyed a cool breeze. The weather was much better today, upper 70’s with less humidity. Tomorrow will be in the lower 70’s.
From the park, we walked to Chinatown for dinner at Grand Chau Chow.
This is the exterior used for the old TV show “Cheers”. This is really the Bull & Finch pub. The bar is in the lower level of this building, the Hampshire House. The building was dismantled in England, shipped to Boston and reassembled here at 84 Beacon St. The interior looks nothing at all like the TV show.
Tomorrow we rent a car for the day and drive to Plymouth to see “The Rock” and do a side trip to Rhode Island, just because we can’t figure out why we’d ever go to Rhode Island if we don’t go now.